It’s time.  Gather round blog readers, it’s time for me to tell you about my worst night home alone.  Somehow, when you sign the paperwork making you a 100% bone-fide military spouse, you agree to deal with all sorts of things on your own: plumbing problems, exotic childhood illnesses, and well, my little problem….

My hubby was going to be gone for about a week…leaving on Monday, coming home on Friday.  My aunt was also coming into town on Friday, staying until Sunday, and then on Sunday, my in-laws were coming for a week!  Exhausting, right?  Well…in that week I had to myself, I decided I would take on two projects.  Number 1: I would paint our upstairs guest bathroom.  We had been living in our house about six months, and it was still sponge-painted yellow (ICK!).  Number 2: I would paint the built in bookshelves in our downstairs guest bedroom.  They were a stark white, and I decided to paint them a chocolate brown!  Lovely! I would have three days to paint, and then a last day to clean the house before all our guests!  So I bought the paint and the  painting supplies, and I spent evening one prepping the areas and priming.

Evening two was the big painting night. I started pretty early and painting was going okay…of course, taking a little longer than I wish it was.  I was in the upstairs bathroom with the door closed as I painted the wall behind the door, and I smelled something funky.  I thought it was all the paint fumes in the small bathroom, but after I opened the door, I quickly realized the smell was coming from downstairs.  As I walked downstairs, I quickly realized it was the smell of something burning!  I hadn’t cooked all evening, I had just eaten a sandwich for dinner, so it wasn’t the stove or the oven.  I hadn’t used the fireplace, the heat wasn’t on.  I quickly realized the smell was coming from on side of the house, the side closest to where the water heater was.  Yikes!  I called my hubby, and was a little panicky, and he told me to go turn off the water heater.  So I walked outside to where the access to water heater was and turned off the heater.  As I was walking back inside I looked at our golden retriever, Paul, and saw that his face was all wet.  As I started to walk a little closer, I realized that the smell was coming from HIM!  I locked him outside, and googled “dog” “burning smell”.  And learned that oftentimes a skunk spray, yup, skunk spray, starts off as a burning smell.

I had left our sliding glass door open that evening so that Paul could walk in and outside without me opening the door so I could concentrate on painting.  He had been sprayed, and then come in and rolled around on the carpet to try to get rid of the smell (the area where I had been smelling the strong burning smell).  At this point, it was pretty late in the evening, so I made Paul sleep outside (for the first and only time ever), and I went upstairs to finish painting for the evening and go to bed. I had to stay on the paint schedule so I would finish before our guests came that weekend!

As I was finishing up, I started to feel a little sick.  I realized then that the deli meat had been a little old, and yes, I was facing some stomach issues.  Sooo…one really rough night, one sick day, three dog washings, three bottles of peroxide, one giant bottle of baking soda, and two coats of paint later, I had a painted bathroom, a painted bookshelf, a healthy tummy, a not AS stinky dog, and a fresh smelling carpet.  Seriously folks, you can’t make this stuff up. And what did my husband say when he came home?  ”This place smells like skunk! ” Arrrrg…but I love him anyway

Note to self:

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= BAD NEWS!!!!

But if you ever need a recipe for deskunking a dog, you just let me know!!!